Jim Harris

Jim Harris is an American novelist. He has written three acclaimed novels in the 21st Century, one of which was nominated for a Pen USA award. He writes comic novels about the human condition with characters who are almost always marginalized. His style is often compared to Tom Robbins and Kurt Vonnegut but his content is rougher-edged and often compared to Jim Thompson and Cormac McCarthy with more comic overtones. His unique approach to his characters delineates him from most other comic American male writers, as females are the lead characters in all of his novels.

Jim Harris went to graduate school at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale and graduated in 1990 with a degree in Creative Writing. His mentor at SIU was Rodney Jones, acclaimed American Poet and National Book Award winner. After graduate school Harris would go on to write not a word throughout the 90s. When asked why on numerous occasions, he stated several times that after graduate school the creative wind had been knocked out of him by suddenly realizing the audience who would read his stuff were of absolutely no interest to him. He would spend the 90s teaching English classes at night and computers during the day.

In 1999, he was teaching a night class and he posted to his teacher's website his 2nd novel he wrote in 1989, https://www.amazon.com/Nowhere-Near-Sea-Cortez-catfish-ebook/dp/B076X7FGMS/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=, a student downloaded it, read it, and told him it was amazing and he should try to get it published. He decided to look for a publisher. The first publishing house he sent the novel to, Willowgate Press, accepted the novel, gave him an advance, and the novel was named the May book of the month by the Small Press Review in 2001.

Harris would go on to write another novel, https://www.amazon.com/Bottle-Rain-Jim-Harris-ebook/dp/B00595JQSI/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=, that would get nominated for a PenUsa award in 2008.

Jim Harris would go on to spend almost ten years on an epic novel about the Mexican Immigration Experience called As God Looked On, which was published by Livingston Press in 2016. https://www.amazon.com/As-God-Looked-Jim-Harris-ebook/dp/B073FZB76H/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

As God Looked On would garner excellent reviews from The Florida Book Review, Kirkus, and elsewhere.

In a recent interview Harris was asked why he continues to write. "I have no audience," he said. "It makes me unafraid." Then he laughed. Ultimately, Jim Harris is an irreverent writer as well as an irreverent person. He believes that humor serves a deep function in fiction that reveals the purpose behind and in front of our existence. Irreverent humor is found throughout his prose and it often follows and mingles with every day heartbreaks that we all experience. He has no interest in mainstream fiction or music, but is a music fanatic.

Works

• 2001 Nowhere Near the Sea of Cortez (Willowgate Press)
• 2007 A Bottle of Rain (Livingston Press, The University of West Alabama)
• 2016 AS God Looked On (Livingston Press, The University of West Alabama)